Nielsen, IMMI initiate daily TV ratings for OOH viewing

Mumbai: The Nielsen Company and Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) have begun delivering the first daily all-electronic national TV ratings of television viewing that occurs outside of the home such as offices, fitness clubs, hotels and bars with two charter clients — ESPN and Zenith Media.

The syndicated service launches In the month of July, FOX’s House and ESPN’s Home Run Derby generated the most out-of-home viewing among primetime broadcast and cable respectively, with both attracting 570,000 out-of-home viewers.

Among a group of highly rated special events/sports programs from 30 June to 10 August, the program with the highest number of out-of-home viewers was the Olympics Opening Ceremony on NBC, with 1.1 million viewers.

"Until now, no one has been able to provide on-going 24/7 national measurement of television viewing that takes place outside the home. Working with IMMI, Nielsen can now capture out-of-home viewing and provide a more complete picture of how people are watching television," said Nielsen Company executive vice president, media client services Sara Erichson.

"Our co-branded product with Nielsen is one of the services IMMI offers in an effort to give media companies and advertisers data that helps them make smart business decisions. We are living in an environment where viewers are increasingly consuming media in locations outside of the home, and as researchers we need to factor in audience exposure from all directions," said Integrated Media Measurement Inc. president and CEO Tom Zito.

"Out-of-home delivery is a critical part of ESPN delivery, encompassing usage on campuses, in hotels, at work as well as bars and restaurants. ESPN Research has spent years examining and valuing our out-of-home audience in various ways. We are interested both in the technology of this service, utilizing the first meter that captures viewing outside of homes and dorms, and in the program-level precision that it provides," said ESPN vice president integrated media research Glenn Enoch.

"Zenith believes firmly in following the video," said Zenith Media US president Wendy Marquardt. "In a mobile society, viewership isn’t just about people sitting in the living room gathered around the set. Nielsen’s Out-of-Home service is part of our commitment to the full understanding of video, in the home, out of the home, on the net and on personal media devices."

Nielsen is offering the national service to clients as a stand-alone service, separate from Nielsen’s National People Meter sample, which is used to generate program ratings of viewing that takes place inside people’s homes. Later this year Nielsen and IMMI plan to deliver local out-of-home services in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Denver, which are the first markets in which IMMI has established panels.

The six local markets each have a participating panel of approximately 500 people, or a total of 3,000 participants. The sample for the national service is comprised of participants from the local services, plus an additional 1,700 national panelists to provide a greater representation of the rest of the U.S. The national panel is weighted to be representative of the entire U.S. and has an effective sample size of approximately 2,500 panelists.

IMMI provides panel members with a mobile phone, asking them to carry it with them wherever they go. The mobile phone is equipped with a technology that creates digital signatures of all the audio media (television, radio and movies) to which it has been exposed. IMMI then matches these with audio signatures collected by IMMI from actual telecasts with the results then transmitted to IMMI computer servers for reporting.